


‘til my lungs give out

by beanarie



Series: indisposition [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Cancer, Canon Disabled Character, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Illness, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Post-Betrayal, assumes knowledge of the entire show, background flinthamiltons - Freeform, background james/thomas, despite being an au, mention of madi/silver
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 11:02:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18715732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanarie/pseuds/beanarie
Summary: “You could have stood by me regardless,” James points out.“I could have done,” Silver agrees. “Do they allow prisoners conjugal visits with each other, do you think?”





	‘til my lungs give out

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [twofrontteethstillcrooked](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofrontteethstillcrooked/pseuds/twofrontteethstillcrooked) for the valuable and astonishingly speedy beta.

One glimpse, one split second flash of a white hospital room door is all Flint can manage before he has to slam his eyes shut and roll over to face the wall.

His most recent memories are worryingly fragmented. Silver, a car, a village in the middle of fucking nowhere, and now, this. How did he end up _here_? 

"That sounded rather more purposeful than the previous few agonized groans. Are you waking properly?"

His eyes fly open while the rest of Flint goes completely still.

"You should know, I was assigned to be your legal advocate. That's how I was able to have your handcuff removed. Your drug screening had cleared you of those drink-driving charges already, however. The irony is that I'm not generally referred for cases like yours. You scarcely needed my services at all."

Flint turns slowly. _I'm dead,_ he thinks. _There are headaches in the afterlife. And rambling._

The occupant of the chair smiles. The sunlight hits him at just the right angle that he seems to glow. "I would say you look wonderful, except in all honesty you look like something splattered on the roadside. But that's more a judgement on whoever dosed you with Rohypnol."

" _Thomas_?"

A hand takes his. It feels warm and solid and real. "Hello, James," he hears, and he never thinks of himself as Flint again.

~Fourteen months later~

Squinting under the cloudless midday sky, James walks out of the visitor's exit of the prison and sees something out of the corner of his eye. He proceeds to take a left, a right, and another left, then stops at the underpass.

Within less than a minute, Silver, looking over his shoulder instead of right in front of him, starts violently at the sound of James clearing his throat. 

James glares at the baseball cap doing a crap job of hiding his identity. He's offended as well as enraged. "Did you think I wouldn't feel your eyes on me?"

Silver opens his mouth as if to speak, but James doesn't give him the chance. He gets in close, knocking the silly hat from Silver's head, and grabbing his arm. This causes one sleeve to ride up and lands his touch on curiously hairless skin. He gawps at the arm almost cartoonishly and steps back, breathing hard.

When James was seventeen, his grandfather died of stomach cancer that spread to various other places. The chemo let him keep the hair on his head, but everywhere south of his neck was fair game. Finer details about the old man have fallen away, especially those gray, miserable months surrounding his death, but James will never forget those bald, skinny arms.

"The cancer came back, didn't it?"

Silver looks away. His eyes, now that he can see them, are bruised with dark bags. There are lines on his gaunt face that were not there a year ago.

"You're dying?" James asks, making such an effort to moderate his tone that the energy he drew from might have stolen the life from nearby plants.

"You believe you aren't. That's unsurprising." That veneer of disaffection is not helping James's fury at all. 

"Are you dying?" James growls, and the smirk falls from Silver's lips.

"They haven't decided yet."

"When."

"When will they decide? That's not-"

"Keep equivocating and I'll rip off one of your remaining limbs. When did you know? Is this the reason you made all your arrangements, put all us ducks in a tidy fucking row? You nearly killed me. I crashed into a police car and got concussion. And why? For what?" 

Silver takes one step forward. "There's nothing I could say that would make what I did even remotely acceptable." 

"Try."

"Oh, I have." He taps his temple. "Played out this moment many a time. Nothing worked, ultimately."

"Try anyway." 

"Could I just... look at you a moment?" Silver swallows. "Please?"

"No. Avert your eyes."

Silver's chuckle is a barely audible puff of breath. 

~

"Well," James says.

Silver wriggles into a more comfortable position in the reclining chair, making the IV line sway as though from a gentle breeze. "Well, what?"

"Your reasoning. We could start now."

"Knowing I'm incapable of walking away for the duration of my treatment." Silver wags a finger. "Bastard."

"Did you expect me to change that much? Simply because I'm with a former country lawyer and not an active criminal?"

"I was jealous of your beard."

"What."

"That is why I plotted behind your back, drained your funds, drugged you, and placed you behind the wheel of a car to be caught by police."

"My beard."

Silver scratches the scruff around his chin. "I've never been able to grow one properly. It's been a lifelong source of consternation, to be honest."

~

Silver exits the toilet after vomiting a third time, acknowledging James with sort of wave. "You don't have to stay." His head is down, focused on getting the crutch to coordinate with his leg.

"I'm well aware."

"I think I'm over the worst of it."

"Is it generally done by now?"

"Dunno." Silver lowers himself onto the bed with a groan. "The first round didn't do this. Second waited until about halfway through the cycle. This is a new formula, and it's proving a lot more entertaining so far."

They talked about this scenario years ago when the doctors were figuring out the nature of the tumor in his leg and if the cancer had taken root anywhere else. Silver had been adamant there was no way he'd voluntarily submit to even one round of chemo if there was no end in sight. ("Don't know about anyone else, but masochism has never done it for me.")

Silver goes silent and still. James fiddles with the placement of the water glass on the night table and the rubbish bin on the floor, trying to make them as accessible as possible. The old role reasserts itself without anyone asking it to. The sights and smells are heightened yet familiar. The pill bottles now take up the entire vanity: vitamin supplements, stool softeners, sleep aids, mood stabilizers, muscle relaxers, opiates, and more. James stops counting bottles and checks his phone for new messages.

A very quiet half an hour later, Silver opens his eyes. "There were forces that would have taken you down without any help from me."

James puts the phone away. "Is that meant to be new information?"

Silver's tiny smile is cynical. 

"You could have stood by me regardless," James points out.

"I could have done," Silver agrees. "Do they allow prisoners conjugal visits with each other, do you think?"

This road leads to an endless back and forth of little value. 

_Would you have told me about Thomas if you hadn't betrayed me?_ James doesn't ask. Instead he bids Silver good night, and goes the fuck home.

~ 

The prison is very calm today, comparatively. James hasn't witnessed a single person being dragged away by the guards.

"I saw Max on your list of visitors." 

A smile pulls at one side of Eleanor's mouth. "We've patched things up since I regained the brain cells I lost over the fucking man who landed me in here."

"How nice."

"She pretends to be scandalized by the prison wardrobe, but I think seeing me forced to go full butch is why she pops ‘round so often. If I cut my hair, I fancy she might leave Anne and ask for my hand."

He nods once, twice, and then the time feels right to come out with it. "Did you know about Silver?"

She shrugs. "Didn't feel like my place to land you in that kettle of fish again. I apologize if you don't agree."

James shakes his head. No sense in placing blame. He found out when he was meant to. 

A screaming row breaks out on the other side of the room and the guards go running. "So are you done with men now? I have to say, I don't think we're the gender for you."

She lets out a squawk of amused outrage. "Get fucked, Grandad."

~

Silver calls periodically. Sometimes James lets it go to voicemail and listens to the message a few times before deleting it forever. Occasionally, he answers. Occasionally, they meet in a neutral location.

James spent over a year thinking he would never hear that voice again. Now that he doesn't know how much longer they have before that voice is silenced, Silver is even harder to toss aside.

~

They're in a bookstore between biographies and science when Silver first notices the ring. James has always worn it on a chain to keep it close and none of anyone's fucking business. 

James bends down to grab a novel someone had carelessly left on the floor and the ring reveals itself. "Oh," he says, tucking it back in place. 

Silver grabs the book from his hand. "Hm, Eugenides. Wonder if they have any of his others." He takes off toward fiction.

~

One morning Silver's number shows up on James's phone, but it is Max at the other end. "Silver is in hospital," she says in greeting. 

James drops his morning paper onto the table. "Is this..." It?

"They are thinking pneumonia. Dangerous in and of itself, but the alternatives are far more sinister. For now, he is coherent and relatively comfortable." She pauses for a moment. "He did not ask me to call you."

"I understand." He considers not going.

"Well of course you're going." Thomas pours juice in all the glasses and places the bottle back in the fridge. "If he dies without the two of you achieving a resolution, the failure would fester in you the rest of your life."

Looking up from her toast, Miranda nods in support and tries to chew with the amount of noise appropriate for the circumstances. 

~

It's clear upon entering the room that Silver is doped to the fucking gills. 

"Am I," he asks, "hallucinating you?" His eyes are enormous. "I don't think I'd choose for your hair to look like that."

"Prat." James takes a seat. "I shouldn't be surprised you're capable of lying even now. You always liked my hair longer."

"Mm." He shakes his head, rather wobbles it back and forth. He can't seem to lift it from the pillow. "After Guthrie snuffed it and your Miranda fled to... where was it?"

"Tuscany."

"You buzzed it all." He traces the life-line of one hand. "I quite liked that soft tickle on my palm. I liked having unfettered access to those cheekbones, that curve in your eyebrow."

Silver coughs for the lifespan of a housefly and takes even longer to get back to remembering James is there. 

"You know, you would have left," he says roughly. "You were predetermined to leave. Soon as Max told me about Him, I saw our future." 

The beep of the heart monitor, hiss of the machine feeding oxygen into Silver's nose, and the tinny announcements from the hall work in concert to drive James mad. "What did I ever do to make you think I could just walk away?"

Silver's face twists in distress and he turns to face the wall.

"I'm here _now_. After everything. In spite of everything." The words are shards of glass that tear James's throat on their way out. "How does that fit in with your worldview?"

~

There hadn't been much forethought behind sharing that Thomas hates cilantro just like Silver. It didn't mean anything; it was simply a fact. James receives a glare of pure death in response, which says he maybe should have kept this fact to himself.

"Don't force me to meet your sainted husband," Silver says. "Tell me he's joining us here and I swear to every godlike figure ever named I will stick this fork in my neck."

They're in the outdoor area of a cafe, which happened to be more accessible but has the unfortunate side effect of putting them on display to foot traffic. Resentment of the looks he's been getting for being scrawny, one-legged, and in a wheelchair makes the air around Silver wavy, like heat rising off of a sunbaked road.

Touchy a subject as this is, James follows the thread of grumbling in the hopes of distracting himself and Silver enough to prevent some passerby from getting a salt shaker in the face. "I never said Thomas was a saint."

"Well, he'd have to be, wouldn't he?" Silver stops refolding his cloth napkin to gesture at James. "To put up with all of that."

"You and I were together how long? What would that make you?"

" _We_ never promised each other forever, James."

And well, that's a fucking lie, ring or no.

~

One night they decide to go out on the balcony. Not many stars tonight, but the temperature is perfect.

After tipping a few pills down his throat, Silver looks self-conscious. "You've never actually tried these, have you?"

James gives him a sideways glance. "Thanks, but I like the consistency of my shit just fine."

Silver's knowing smile is something to behold. James realizes in that moment that he's missed it. "These are the reason I need the stool softeners," Silver says.

"In that case, I had something similar, I expect, the night you drugged me."

"Oh. Yes." A flush adds a welcome bit of color to Silver's face. "That was, uh, different." He rallies quickly, holding out the bottle in offer. "Don't worry that you're putting me out. Max keeps me well stocked. She prefers me too knackered to leave the house and cause trouble."

"You? Cause trouble?" James says, and he downs two of them. 

The next thought to register is that he has been listening to the pills shaking in the bottle for... quite a bit longer than he would normally. 

There's an odd layer to Silver's demeanor. Sort of bashful, chagrined. James lies on the blanket and waits.

"I called Madi," Silver admits, finally.

He was expecting something far less benign. "And?"

"She didn't threaten to kill me and no police showed up at my location immediately thereafter. She even stayed on the line a full two minutes before ending the call."

"So, a win."

Silver's body releases a clear thread of tension. 

"You expected me to be upset?" Ironically Silver's assumption does annoy James, though the feeling is distant, more like an intellectual recognition of annoyance than the full experience. "You know I never blamed you. If I went for women, I'd've beaten you to her. She's brilliant." Thomas and Miranda are likely violating each other at this very moment. Jealousy is not his way. 

Silver takes a long drink from his water bottle and holds onto it, tapping his fingertips against the sides. James watches a plane cross under the clouds.

"An entire community had hopes upon hopes for her father and I dashed them all."

"Yeah," James says. It had been a heady time, those months they allied with the immigrants. The crimes they committed had an almost all new vocabulary; hacking, doxxing, planting evidence. Scott, alone in a sea of carefully constructed legitimacy, had been the goal. They cleared the path of his rivals and anyone who would oppose him. Then right before Scott was to take the position they'd all prepared him for, the one that would allow him the authority to start making the changes they needed, Silver exposed his double life and connection to the activists known only as Madi and Queen.

"Hornigold's people were going to have her deported," Silver says. "Did I tell you?"

Again, James had been roofied at the time; he was higher then than he is now. But he's reasonably certain Silver told him nothing of the sort. He'd only poured James into the driver's seat, his wet cheeks the only sign that everything was about to change.

"Mm, her and her mother. They had other plans for Scott. Something to maximize his suffering for being a Trojan horse, I expect." Silver stares out at the sky. "Though remaining here while your family is punted back to a country that had them under a death sentence would cause quite a bit of that." 

Saying her name, talking about her, feels like it invoked the spirit of the woman. All of a sudden she's there in that space with them. James remembers the steel in her spine, the intellectual curiosity, the certainty of her righteousness. Regardless of her feelings on Silver, she would take a call from James, he thinks. 

"You really did love her."

"Do," Silver corrects.

"How is that different from my having Thomas?" Their hands are only an inch apart.

Silver releases a slow exhale, looking tired. "Because I know _my_ mind."

James leans in and plants a kiss on that stupid forehead. "You really don't." Silver is not moving. He's barely breathing. James continues on to his temple, the sad whiskers on his chin, his lips. Silver kisses him back with a grin that quickly disappears due to his enthusiasm. 

"What if I spent the night," James asks. 

"You should know," Silver sounds breathless, "I'm not allowed sex."

"I mean, your system is saturated with poison."

The grin springs back into place, lighting up his eyes. "True."

"Hm."

"Wouldn't want your John Thomas to start glowing." 

~ 

Morning birdsong rouses James enough to register the finger gently tracing the border between his hair and his forehead. He opens his eyes to see Silver staring at him as though he's the one that could disappear the second someone turned their head.

"You didn't deserve what I did to you." The hand that isn't stroking James's hair makes haphazardly brutal swipes at the tears streaming down Silver's face. "I haven't said that even once, but- I- How are you with me right now?"

"Come here," James orders, in a tone Silver has almost never defied. Silver slots into place without hesitation, tucking himself inside James's arms and resting his head on James's chest. His sigh speaks of so many things. 

_Thomas was wrong. This will make it harder when he goes._ The voice sounds like Silver's, like he's learned how to sabotage things from inside someone's mind. 

"Listen-" James stops to clear the lump in his throat. "You have time to make it up to me if you don't die." 

Silver's breaths on the side of his neck, the warm arm across his stomach, the curly black hair taking up his field of vision... James takes it all in. A shiver runs through Silver's body. They should not have stayed out here all night. Silver needs water. Silver needs to down the morning meds he's supposed to take on an empty stomach, then eat something, then take the meds that require a full stomach. He needs. He needs. He needs.

_Breathe._ It sounds like Thomas, Miranda, and, finally, Silver. _Breathe._

James inhales and exhales. Then he does it again.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. John Thomas is outdated British slang for penis, and boy did THAT work out in this fandom's favor.  
> 2\. Which of Eleanor's men led to her getting sent to prison? Dealer's choice!


End file.
